pkg update: The certificate which issued this certificate:/C=US/ST=Maryland/O=OmniTI/OU=OmniOS/CN=OmniOS r151018 Release
Signing Certificate/emailAddress=omnios-supp…@omniti.com could not be found.

Thankfully, the solution was a straightforward sequence of steps to upgrade to r151020, then to r151021 and finally to r151022.
From there I was able to successfully upgrade to OmniOS CE. Even “-r” option in “pkg update -rv” worked as a charm because this option doesn’t exist in r151018. Probably, I could skip r151021 all together, but it’s always better be safe than sorry.